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(noun) a brain rotted vision of our artificially created future

Strange photos of a slimy pink Jesus made out of prawns are probably not what OpenAI had in mind when it warned that artificial intelligence could destroy civilization. But this is what happens when you put new technology in the hands of the public and tell them they can do whatever they want. Two years into the generative AI revolution, we’ve reached the era of slop.

The proliferation of synthetic, low-grade content such as Shrimp Jesus usually intended, designed by strange inducements for commercial or engagement purposes. In March, Researchers at Stanford and Georgetown University found that Facebook’s algorithm was in effect hijacked by spammy content from text-to-image models such as Dall-E and Midjourney. The “Crazy Facebook AI slop” X’s account maintains a running tally. A favorite in the run-up to the US election shows that Donald Trump is carefully saving kittens.

But the slop can also be the unintended consequence of AI models trained on AI-generated texts – a form of data set inbreeding whose unfortunate spawn has been compared to the House of Hapsburg.

Accelerationists will tell you that this is just a bump in the road to exciting new user-generated AI content. San Francisco start-up Fable Studio has announced a Netflix-style streaming platform for AI films. Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek says people can share “an incredible amount of content” on the music service now that the cost of making music is close to zero.

The question is whether quality controls will increase with the cost of creation. Note slop’s alliteration with spam — another form of easy online distribution of nonsense.

AI generation watermarks help combat this. Over time, bad content can naturally fade away, hungry for attention. On the other hand, zero-cost, zero-effort content can destroy information sharing and online trust for good. The shrimp Jesus will be the beginning.

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